


Only shooting stars break the mold

by shetlandowl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (So rare it's not even a tag!), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, And here come the warnings:, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Freestyle ancient-ish times that is vaguely reminiscent of Greek times, I was definitely thinking about Eva Keul's work while writing this, If the title or summary doesn't give it away the first paragraph DEFINITELy will, In fact most of this fic features female!Steve Rogers, Institutionalized misandry, M/M, Sexism, So maybe think of this as set in the worst nightmare of an ancient Athenian citizen, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicidal thoughts is very very brief but I'm tagging to be on the safe side, The story also loosely follows a certain animated movie you likely know, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Uh how could I forget, but nothing graphic i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 09:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14998106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shetlandowl/pseuds/shetlandowl
Summary: Tony stared at the fat little donkey sitting inhiscottage in disbelief, and silently he begged the gods to explain how the day could have turned on him like this. “But,” he stammered, too angry and shocked to patch his thoughts together properly. “This, this ismyswamp. It’s mine, only mine: I’m safe here, alone here, you can’t just—”“Not anymore, pal,” Clint said with a smug flare of his nostrils. “It’s our swamp now.”





	Only shooting stars break the mold

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I would occupy myself on an 8+ hour flight, but without internet to reach my WIPs, I ended up starting + finishing this instead. This is a silly idea that came up very, very briefly in Feb. 2018 SoCal Disneyland meet-up, and I have to say it was really nice to sit down and write something from start to finish. It sure made the flight pass quickly! 
> 
> I say this (and that it is unbeta'd!), because ehhhhh this might not be the best thing I've ever written. Still, I hope there's something in here for you to enjoy! =D

Thunder rolled in the distance, and the promise of rain was heavy in the air. The stench of wild fungus growths and deep trenches full of sewer water clogged the humid summer night in a waxy and repulsive caricature of fresh air. Tony couldn’t have asked for a better conspiracy of good fortunes if he had tried. 

Sure it was disgusting, and maybe his sense of smell was more about guesswork than it was five years ago, but at least he was free. At least he was alone. At least he was safe. Between the natural stench of his swamp and the coming storm, he could sleep tonight without worrying whether this would be the night when the Women found him. 

The day had even started out better than usual: while he’d been out tending his turnips, he had spotted a lost water-snake caught in the swamp water. He’d managed to pull it out without injury. With its scales removed and both heads cut off, it was almost two pounds of edible meat. Food for a week, if he smoked it right. 

After a long day of foraging, gardening, and walking the perimeter of the swampland he called home, Tony could finally sit back in the peaceful silence to enjoy his dinner. While the wind pounded against the wooden walls and the closed shutters of his sturdy little cottage, a fire crackled in the hearth, and Tony could enjoy his smoked water-snake in relative peace. If he didn’t chew it too carefully, it didn’t taste too bad either—chewy, sure, but pleasantly bland with his turnip mash. 

He hadn’t made it half-way through his dinner before he realized the pounding storm and howling winds were suspiciously articulate.

“Let me in!” a male voice was shouting from the other side of his front door. “I know you’re in there, let me in! I’ll DIE!”

Tony thought about it. He stared at the beige-colored food on the flat stone he used as a plate, and he wondered just how bad it would be to be as dead as that water-snake instead. What did the water-snake have to worry about anymore, in the grand scheme of things? 

“I’ll die on your doorstep!” The voice threatened from the other side, “Have you seen a dead body, pal? You know what dead bodies DO? First thing: they evacuate everything. EVERYTHING! Shit and guts all over your doorstep, and I’ll make it extra shitty just for you. Is that what you want? You want me to—”

Tony tore the door open to glare at the man disturbing his peace, but there was nobody there. He was glancing left and right, wondering if a particularly fierce wind hadn’t carried the intruder away for him, but instead something short and stout shoved past his legs, making a break for it into his warm little home. 

“Turnips! My favorite,” the voice said, and Tony turned and stared. Stared, because there was a short, fat donkey licking eagerly at his plate. 

It _talked_. 

“You’re a witch,” Tony stammered, too stunned to move. “You—you’re an, an animag—”

“I’m fucking hungry,” the donkey complained after licking Tony’s plate clean, and Tony frowned. “You got any more turnips?”

Finally, Tony thought to shut the open door behind him. “What are you?” he asked, staying by the door where he could stay as far from the speaking animal as he could get. 

The donkey blinked big, brown eyes at him. Human eyes. “I’ve eaten grass for seven days and eight nights,” he said. “You give me two turnips, and I’ll tell you anything.”

*** 

The donkey’s name turned out to be Clint. Clint had been a man, until he escaped the bed of a Woman more powerful than he had thought possible. 

“I lived in the East,” he explained while he gnawed on a raw turnip. Tony couldn’t stop staring at his teeth. “I thought I was safe in the mountains, but one night it was cold, and I had to build a fire. Women found me by morning. Their chief is old, and she has not yet had a daughter. I was in her bed for a week before I escaped.”

That, finally, distracted Tony from Clint’s enormous, blunt teeth. “You’re—you’re a fugitive?” he stammered. 

“They won’t find me here,” Clint promised, but Tony was already on his feet and running to the east-facing window. He pushed the shutter out just enough to peek out over the horizon. The night was dark and the wind treacherous; nobody would be foolish enough to approach his little cottage this night. 

“They sure won’t,” he agreed as he pulled the shutter closed again. “You’re out of here as soon as the storm is over.”

“What?” Clint breathed, glancing at the front door nervously. “You’d—you’d throw me out? Alone?”

“It’s every man for himself,” Tony answered simply. “You brought it on yourself. Once they catch you, you can’t run _away_ , everyone knows that,” he pointed out, in case Clint thought he could guilt Tony into sacrificing his own safety somehow. “And running from a Chief? What were you thinking? Chiefs have magic, she’ll find you one way or another. They’ll never stop hunting you.”

Clint glanced at the door, then looked at Tony. Then, without preamble, he sat his heavy haunches down on the packed dirt floor of Tony’s cottage like it was his own damn floor. “I’m staying,” he announced. “You can’t move me.”

“I have a spear,” Tony told him, his voice lowered into a threat. “Don’t make me use it.”

“I kill wolves with my hooves, and I can tear through your arm with one bite. I’m not afraid of you,” Clint retorted coolly. “This can be peaceful, or you can suffer severely, but I’m staying either way.”

Tony stared at the fat little donkey sitting in _his_ cottage in disbelief, and silently he begged the gods to explain how the day could have turned on him like this. “But,” he stammered, too angry and shocked to patch his thoughts together properly. “This, this is _my_ swamp. It’s mine, only mine: I’m safe here, alone here, you can’t just—”

“Not anymore, pal,” Clint said with a smug flare of his nostrils. “It’s our swamp now.”

*** 

He could turn Clint in, Tony thought to himself later that night. Early the next morning, he would tell the donkey he was going fishing, but he would travel to the Eastlands to find this tribe of Women that Clint had disgraced and tell them where they could find him. They would take what they wanted from him, and then serve him his punishment, and Tony would be at peace again. 

_But what would keep them from taking Tony, too?_ a traitorous little voice whispered. They would know of his cottage then; even if these Women of the East did not take him, they could tell others of his home. 

One could never trust a Woman. There was only one purpose they had for his kind, and to that end no man was better or worse than any other. He had no reason to believe he would ever be safe again if they knew where he lived. 

No, serving them Clint’s location would not do. Tony needed another plan. 

*** 

“There is another way,” Clint told him the next morning over a silent breakfast of boiled turnips. 

“Another way to what?” Tony said, still staring at Clint’s enormous white teeth. 

“Legend says there is a Last Chief,“ Clint told him, mashing the boiled turnip into oozing paste between his teeth. Tony frowned down at his own food and carefully put his fork down. There went his appetite. “She was foretold to unite all men and Women with compassion, but the Great Chief of Old turned her away into the wild as a child to prevent the prophecy from being completed.”

“Yeah, I heard that story, too,” Tony told him dryly. “She was lost centuries ago. Even if the story was true—even if a little girl could have survived the wild on her own, she surely died a long time ago.” 

“Boys are turned into the wild when they are young, many of us survive,” Clint pointed out. “And she was cast away by magic, so she could never return alone. I heard she will always be waiting for someone to find her, someone whose compassion can return her to this world. Once she becomes the Great Chief, she can reverse my spell and save us—not just you and me, but all men.”

“I don’t care about ‘all men,’ _pal_ ,” Tony snarled. “‘All men’ couldn’t care less about me. All I care about is me and my swamp. My life is good in my swamp, it’s peaceful; quiet. Or it was, until _you_ happened.”

“They say the Great Chief of Old cast the Last Chief out into the Far East,” Clint continued as if Tony hadn’t spoken. “If you help me find her and return her as the rightful Great Chief, I’ll leave the swamp never to return.”

“Oh, for—what if we never find her?” Tony snapped. “It’s been centuries! You don’t think anyone has ever tried?”

“You must search with compassion,” Clint gently pointed out. “How many men who have searched do you think have searched for her with genuine compassion?”

Women hunted men for their necessary purpose, sometimes even picking and choosing their prizes by the meat on their bones and the superficial attributes. Women hunted men like game beasts, and when male children reached puberty, they were turned away from their mothers and abandoned into the wilderness. 

Tony suspected few, if any, could ever muster genuine compassion for Women. He doubted he ever could himself. 

“What makes you think I could?” he asked, quietly. 

Clint nickered quietly as he considered Tony’s question. He glanced at the closed door of the quiet little cottage, then looked at him with something akin to a smile. “Well. You opened the door to a stranger in the storm, didn’t you?”

*** 

They traveled only by night, and when they slept, they slept in shifts. One fortnight passed before Clint relented and allowed Tony to ride on his back; they both traveled barefoot, but in this case, Clint was clearly advantaged by his curse. 

“We will never speak of this,” he muttered at Tony while they clomped along the trail. 

“If we go any farther East, we will fall off the edge of the earth and there will be no-one to tell,” Tony groused in reply, adjusting his seat on Clint’s bony back for the hundredth time. He had never ridden a donkey before, and he never wanted to again; apparently, he still had more to learn about the downsides of being born male. 

Clint huffed and tossed his head. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a real pessimist?” 

“I’m a realist,” Tony said, sensible as ever, but he didn’t linger on the thought. “Whatever, we should start looking for somewhere to sleep. It will be morning soon.”

Clint slowed his pace, and together they peered at every reflecting surface and inspected every solid-looking shape in the dark to see if it could serve them as cover in the daytime. The sun had all but fully crested the horizon when they finally stumbled into some good fortune: a dry, uninhabited cave. Tony reached into his little satchel, and with the help of his flint, grease saved from fishes and water-snakes, and pieces of his old curtains, he cobbled together a little torch to help guide them through the cave safely. 

“A cave like this should not be so empty,” Clint pointed out once Tony’s torch flickered and died in a gust of smoke, slowing their pace to nearly a halt. “We should turn back. Only a predator could live here undisturbed.”

“And what predator do you know more powerful than Woman?” Tony whispered, and gently he clapped Clint’s neck in encouragement. “Come, I think we’re onto something. If we thought to seek refuge in such a cave, why should not the Last Chief have done the same?”

Clint’s ears swiveled forward in his excitement, he clomped onwards with newfound energy, further into the unknown depths of the cave. They traveled slowly but steadily, moving through the darkness even while daylight shone above the surface of the cave. It was not until dusk fell and the sun disappeared into the west that they finally emerged on the other end, and found themselves in a world foreign to anything either of them had ever known. Here, the forests were so tall that they could not see where the tops of the trees ended, and they were so wide that even three grown men could not have reached each other’s hands standing around the trunk. Cold, heavy clouds hung low in the air, billowing out between the enormous evergreens so near the earth that sitting on Clint’s back, Tony could have stretched and caught wisps of the corporeal haze in the palm of his hand. 

“This is some spooky shit,“ Clint whispered under his breath, but Tony couldn’t stop staring all around him. He had never seen trees like this, and he certainly had never felt this way before. The clouds were not only a blanket on the earth, but it felt safe, protective in a way, a blanket to hide them from the terror and predation of Women. 

“This isn’t spooky,” Tony mumbled in disagreement, and he yawned loudly enough to interrupt himself. “Can’t you feel it?” he asked after a moment, his voice heavy with sleep. “We’re safe here… we’re safe.”

Clint swiveled his ears flat back against his head and came to an immediate halt. 

“Tony?” he asked quietly. 

“We can stay here,” Tony whispered in a voice that sounded unnatural and very, very far away. “We’re safe here, we never have to go back.”

“You said that already,” Clint observed suspiciously. “Uh, Tony? Maybe you should chew on a turnip or something? You don’t sound right.”

“But he is right,” a voice echoed through the mist, unmistakably feminine and powerful. Clint tossed his head and tried to twist to see where the voice had come from, but he could not see anything through the heavy clouds around them. “You are safe here, and here you will remain.”

They were trapped. Whatever this great Sorceress was, wherever she was hiding, Clint was powerless to flee. Tony sat on his back like a drugged sack of potatoes, and he would undoubtedly fall to the ground if Clint moved too quickly. 

“We’re not afraid of you, Sorceress!” he shouted anyway, lying through his big, blunt teeth. “I am not under your spell, your prey will not come easily today: I will fight you!”

A rumble rose from somewhere deep in the woods, and all around them, the towering evergreens trembled and shook as a out of the mist rose an immense and mighty dragon that was so big that Clint had to turn his head to see the full span of her leathery black wings. Not that he could really pay attention to anything but her gleaming red claws, all of which were easily taller than he was long. 

“You are breathtaking,” he heard Tony murmur up at the dragon with great reverence and tenderness, and Clint’s stomach roiled in horrified despair. Tony was already lost, there was no chance for him now; Clint should turn and run while he still had the freedom to save himself. 

“Oh, I bet you say that to all the Girls,” said the voice from earlier and, despite the overwhelming distraction of the murderous dragon towering over them, Clint noticed that the voice did not come from the dragon itself. 

It took Clint more courage than he knew he possessed to dare look away from the dragon’s savage teeth and claws long enough to spot the beautiful, blonde woman riding on the back of the black dragon. She smiled at them, as if unbothered by the abominable beast she so casually rode. 

“My name is Stephanie,” she said kindly, and Clint all but felt Tony shuddering with delight on his back. “Who is to be my bride?”

Clint gaped and blinked his big, brown eyes up at Stephanie until he made sense of what she had asked. 

Without any tact or decorum, he rushed to declare, “Anybody but me!”

*** 

An hour later, Stephanie took them to a clearing where the sun shone. She lifted the discombobulating haze from Tony’s mind, and, when her dragon took to resting far enough away from them, the fear of being scorched or eaten alive lifted from Clint’s thoughts. They could sit together around a small fire, drink from the clear spring water Stephanie generously shared, and speak of what was to be. 

“I was cursed never to return,” Stephanie explained in a patient voice. “My curse will only be broken when a Chief of my kin becomes my bride. Are you here to bring me to her? Tell me, what is her name?”

Tony and Clint exchanged uncomfortable glances, and it wasn’t until Clint pointed out that he’d done all the physical work so far that Tony steeled himself and said, “That is not the legend we have heard,” he explained. “We… we were searching for the Last Chief. She who prophecy says will unite men with the tribes of Women and bring peace when she becomes the Great Chief. No binding ceremony required,” he finished awkwardly. 

Stephanie stared at Tony with an agitated frown, as if she just couldn’t accept what he was saying. “But,” she started to say, but her voice trailed to silence almost immediately. Briefly, she glanced in the direction of her dragon, and when she looked back at Tony again, there was a clear resolution in her determined gaze. 

“I will return with you,” she said. “We will try it your way. If this does not work, you will help me find a tribe and a bride to lift the curse. Do you agree?”

“Then you will lift Clint’s curse,“ Tony reminded her. “And you will unite men with the tribes.”

“I swear to do so as soon as it is within my power to do so,” Stephanie promised. “But until then, it is not safe. We travel only by night.”

“But,” Clint protested, and helplessly he tried to gesture at the peacefully napping dragon. “Are you kidding me? You have a dragon! Nobody would dare harm us; she is terrifying.”

One great, black eyelid slid open to reveal a blood-red eye. She stared at Clint with a resigned air of amusement, but otherwise, she did not move. 

“She will follow us from a distance,” Stephanie said quietly. “The only thing our legends have in common is compassion and love. We cannot frighten the tribes to do as we ask.”

“Stephanie is right,” Tony agreed when Clint seemed to wheeze in complaint about not using their most effective weapon. “You said it yourself, Clint: How many men who have searched for Stephanie do you think have done so with genuine compassion? It’s gotten us this far, we can’t stop now.”

Clint stared at Stephanie and Tony like they had both grown numerous heads without realizing. But by the look of them, he wouldn’t be able to convince either of them to bring the dragon to the inevitable battle (war). 

“Alright, okay. Sure,” he finally said. “We’ll all just die, I guess.“

*** 

They traveled together by night and slept by day as they had agreed. Tony and Stephanie walked on foot, while Clint trailed behind them with all of their supplies over his back. In the final hours before dawn, Stephanie would blow into a whistle for her dragon. Neither Tony nor Clint could make out any sound from the whistle, but no matter how far they had traveled in the dark, the dragon would always find them, and she would always come to Stephanie. Every day, Stephanie slept under the protective wing of her dragon, while Tony and Clint curled up under a tree together to sleep nearby. 

Clint and Tony slept better on their return trip with Stephanie than ever before, safe and comforted by the surreal protection of a slumbering dragon. 

One day after a fortnight of travel, Tony and Clint woke in the early darkness of night to find that Stephanie had already gotten a fire going and had started their first meal of the day. 

“Some eggs for us,” she said and handed Tony one of the plates of carved wood, then sat down two roasted turnips in a bucket for Clint. “And turnips for you. We were running out of turnips,” she explained, a little quieter, “we need to start eating different things, or we’ll soon run out.”

Tony stared at the plate of eggs he had been given. When he looked up at Stephanie again, he looked at her with confusion and wonder. “You… you made this? For us?”

Stephanie red lips curled into a bashful smile, and a faint blush of color rose in her cheeks. “Of course. Is, um… is that bad? Do you not like eggs?”

“I’ve only ever eaten eggs twice in my life,” Tony whispered, sitting down with care so that he wouldn’t drop his plate or his eggs. “This—Stephanie, this is… thank you.”

“And this is fucking delicious,” Clint announced around eager mouthfuls of turnips. “You gotta give me the recipe to this, it’s so much better than anything Tony ever made.”

Tony shot Clint an irritated look, but Stephanie didn’t notice. She simply shrugged and said, “There’s no recipe, I just put them over the fire.”

“It’s not like I love turnips… we only brought turnips because it’s all I had at home,“ Tony explained quietly. 

“Where do you live?“ Stephanie asked, more curious than Tony ever could have imagined a Woman being in anything he said. His pleasant surprised was short-lived, however, and he shifted uncomfortably. What would she know of the way men had to live? To her, a humble home might be a countryside house, or a cottage hidden in the woods. 

“We live in a cottage in a swamp,” Clint announced in the silence. “A stinky-ass swamp where two sewers dump into the river.”

“ _Clint,_ ” Tony hissed, mortified. It wasn’t as if Clint had lied, but hell, he could have at least put it more nicely than that. To save himself the shame of meeting Stephanie’s pitying look, Tony stared down at his fried eggs and tried to shrug casually. 

Tony couldn’t see how Stephanie’s brows climbed up her forehead until they were nearly obscured behind her fringe, but he sure heard the lingering silence that grew between them. 

“You live in a cottage?” she whispered after a long silence, a buoyant wonder lifting her voice, and even Tony’s spirit. Any fear or shame he felt in thinking she would find the very idea of living in a swamp revolting was forgotten, and he watched her with a budding hope he hadn’t dared to feel for a long, long time. 

Maybe, after all, there could be compassion and understanding between men and Women. 

“I did, too,” Stephanie clarified more quietly with a wistful smile. “Once. Before the curse.” 

“I built it myself, years ago. It’s not difficult,” Tony told her, growing more eager the more he spoke. “I could help you, or build you one; maybe somewhere near fresh water with a big clearing for your dragon? I don’t think I could build one for her, but maybe it would be big enough that she could see you inside it? We could build a hearth that she could fire, so you could cook anything you like, and keep warm all winter. Or, I mean,“ Tony stammered in the end, as he started to remember himself. “For you, and your bride, of course. I would build a cottage for you and your bride.”

The look of delighted interest faded from Stephanie’s face as Tony stumbled his way back to the talk of her future bride, but she said nothing. An awkward silence stretched between them when only Clint’s eager munching could be heard, until finally she spoke. 

“You know what I would really like?” she whispered softly, her voice lowered as if she was imparting a secret. Tony leaned in with interest, though even he would be hard pressed to say whether he was interested in what she was saying, or Stephanie herself. “A cottage near enough to a stream so carrying water home would not take all morning, but not so long that the house would be in danger of rising tides.”

“Carrying water home?” Tony asked rhetorically. “We will direct the water directly into the house: it will not be a pump, but a spout, and from it fresh water will fill any sink or tub. You will never have to carry water again. And, if you wish, build a fire under the bathing water such that you always have warm showers, if you wish it.”

“Tony,” Stephanie said with a quiet, but sincere, laugh. “You speak as if you could wield magic. Truly, you amaze me.”

Never in his wildest dreams had Tony thought a Woman would listen to him, let alone speak kindly to him. Before he had to respond to Stephanie’s compliment and clear awe, Tony ducked his head and started shoveling his now-cooled eggs into his mouth. 

Cold or not, the eggs tasted better than anything he had eaten in a long, long time. The very best part about the eggs was that Stephanie had made them for him, and he cherished every bite. 

*** 

When they inevitably crossed into the Eastlands where Clint had first escaped the clutches of the tribe’s Chief, they were captured almost immediately. The Women came upon them in the dead of night, and Stephanie had not yet called her dragon to them for their nightly rest. Clint’s ears lay down flat in his sudden terror, and while Tony did what he could to stay close to the fearful donkey and assure him that the Women would not separate them, Stephanie placed herself between them, determined to shield them from the warriors even though she was unarmed herself. 

“Woman, we mean you no harm,” the most decorated warrior declared. “The donkey is a coward who deserted a mating, and the other is an unclaimed man. We will take them, in the name of Chief Talia.”

“Escaped after a _week!_ ” Clint cried indignantly, stomping wildly in his distress. 

“Take me instead,” Stephanie told the warrior in a defiant and steady voice, as if they were not surrounded and outmatched in every way. “I am Stephanie, the Woman of prophecy. When I am bound to a Chief, my curse will be broken. Leave these men unharmed, and once my curse is lifted, I will give her the daughter she desires.”

The warrior looked down at Stephanie in confusion, but she did not dawdle over the decision for too long. With a last glance at Clint, Tony, and Stephanie, she decided, “We take them all.”

*** 

It wasn’t long before Stephanie was brought before Chief Talia. She explained again how her curse would be lifted when a Chief of her kin was honor-bound to her, and how, once the curse was lifted, she would be able to bear a child for the Chief. A daughter. She explained that in return for helping her find a Chief to wed, Stephanie had promised to have Clint’s curse lifted, and grant both men protection. 

“If you be my bride, I will break the spell on that ass,” Talia agreed, “but men are becoming more difficult to find, Stephanie. These are healthy men. Could one of them not make you with a daughter?”

As a courtesy to her betrothed, Stephanie considered the Chief’s suggestion. “Not by force,” Stephanie eventually decided. “I will ask; if they agree to make me with a daughter, then so be it.”

*** 

As soon as she could, Stephanie rushed to the small, stone building where Tony and Clint were held in separate cells. It was still dark outside, but dawn was approaching. She did not have much time. 

She made her way to Clint first, carrying a change of clothes and the vial of potion that would turn him from a donkey to a human man again. 

“Drink this,” she insisted, uncapping the bottle with her teeth and helping to angle the vial just so to pour as much of it into his wide mouth as possible. 

Clint coughed and tossed his head, repulsed by the taste of whatever Stephanie was pushing on him. “What—that was liquid shit! Why did you give me—oh, gods, you sure it wasn’t poison?” he asked in the end, a little more seriously. 

“I don’t think the Chief would risk upsetting her future bride,” Stephanie muttered, but still she peered at Clint like she really, really hoped Talia had not lied to her. The potion took a little time to take effect, but once it started, the transformation was almost immediate. Clint lay whimpering in a heap on the floor, in too much pain to move yet, so it was Stephanie who helped get the long tunic over his head and his arms, tugging it down in place to at least maintain his modesty until he could put the pants on himself. 

“I think,” Clint finally grunted, breathless and mostly half-alive, “I think I’d preferred the poison.”

Stephanie huffed a quiet laugh and smacked Clint lightly upside the head. “I talked to Talia,” she said then, rushing to say everything she needed to say before dawn. “She has promised that you and Tony will be spared: you will be released, and allowed to go wherever you want to go. She will never bother you again. And, as soon as I can,” she promised, “I will keep the rest of my promise. I will peacefully unite men with the tribes.“

Breathless and still recovering from his transformation, Clint peered up at her with a healthy suspicion honed by a lifetime of experience with Women and their promises. 

“But…” he prompted when Stephanie didn’t volunteer more information. 

“But,” Stephanie continued, albeit uncomfortably. “She wants me to bear her a child as soon as possible, a daughter. She suggested I consider one of you as the man, but she has accepted that I will only ask you and give you the choice. If you do not wish to make me with child, you will be released and be free, unharmed.”

“Even if that was true,” Clint said quietly, because yeah, no. He’d believe that miracle when he saw it. “I’ve seen the way Tony looks at you, Stephanie. He stood by my side when he didn’t need to, and I will stand by him. My answer is no.”

A blush rose in Stephanie’s pale cheeks, and she bit her lip bashfully as she tried to resist a bright smile. “You think so? I mean,” she whispered, sneaking a little closer where she was crouched beside Clint. “You think he, he could care for me? A Woman?”

“Could?” Clint huffed, and he probably would have laughed if he wasn’t still recovering his breath. “He does care for you.”

“I care for him, too,” Stephanie confessed quietly, but with a nervous excitement. “Should I tell him? Should I tell him first, or should I only ask? What if I tell him, and he tells me, but then I am—I am, I am to take the Chief as my bride, this could only be for a mating, I—”

“Hey, hey, hang on, pal,” Clint interjected loudly before Stephanie spiraled out of control. “Look, you’re just gonna have to trust yourself, okay? Men don’t exactly… men and Women don’t exactly do what it is you two are …doing. You don’t hear about a Woman treating a man well, okay? It’s not like he built his house in a swamp for his health,” Clint pointed out. “But, somehow he cares about you, so you’re clearly doing something right. Just… keep doing wh… uh. Stephanie?”

Stephanie had been so wrapped up in what Clint was saying that she had missed the initial stages of her curse. 

“No,” she whispered as her eyes grew wide in dismay, and she and Clint both stared at her as a golden light shone from within her chest like a bright, white star until it consumed her entirely. 

When Clint finally could blink the blinding light out of his eyes and his vision adjusted to the early light of dawn, it was no longer Stephanie, the beautiful, young blonde who was with him in his cell: in front of him stood instead was a tall, muscular blond man. He had Stephanie’s blue eyes, the same nose, and the same mouth, but where she had soft curves, he had firm angles and planes of muscle, and where she had been lithe and supple, his frame all but bulged with muscle honed either in the hunt, or in combat. 

Somehow, the dress managed to stretch as needed to stay in place. 

Clint stared up at him without blinking. “Explain.”

Steve glanced around them anxiously, crouching even lower to make sure nobody could see him from the door or through the lone little window of Clint’s cell. 

“It is my curse,” he whispered urgently. “Nobody was supposed to know, I—as soon as I am honor-bound to a Chief of my kin, I will be, I will be who I am meant to be.”

“….okay, I don’t know what I’m supposed to call you—”

“Steve.”

“—whatever. You _gotta_ tell Tony,” Clint insisted in a raised voice. “Like, right now.” 

“What? No!” Steve cried, then lowered his voice to hiss, “he can’t see me like this, Clint! What if—I am to be bound to the Chief, I will be a woman. If he sees me like this, he, he—he might say no. When I ask him, for the child,” Steve whispered, almost fearful in his tone. “His child.” 

Clint squinted at Steve as if nothing he had just said made sense. “…what?”

“Don’t give me that! Don’t act like you can’t understand. A Woman is blessed! She has a gift and a potential unlike that of a man,” Steve insisted desperately, and he gestured at himself in his male form with a grimace of disgust as he whispered, “What could I give him like this?”

“…there is so much wrong with that statement,” Clint finally said, keeping his voice low since Steve already seemed agitated enough. “You realize that whether you’re a man or a Woman, and whether he agrees to the mating or not, he will never see the child? It will be the Chief’s daughter, or the Chief’s servant if he is a boy, until he is abandoned to the wild. But if you are a man, you could choose to be with him instead of with the Chief.”

“Of course I’ve considered that,” Steve whispered miserably. “But if I am not bound to the Chief, she will not release you and Tony. And she will punish you for abandoning the mating.”

“Right. Forgot about that,” Clint mumbled, frowning at Steve’s point. They sat in thoughtful silence for some time, Clint counting blocks of stone in his cell and Steve picking at little tufts of pilling fabric on his dress. 

Finally, Clint sighed. He could only think of one way out of this mess. 

“So, how do you feel about using that dragon now?”

*** 

Steve whistled for the dragon while he was still in Clint’s cell, then snuck out to meet her under cover of darkness. He slept under the protective cover of her wing like he had every night on the road. Anyone who tried to visit the Chief’s betrothed was turned away by the threat of her dragon’s wrath, and it was not until sundown that the dragon lifted her wings again to allow Stephanie to emerge. 

The first thing she did was to run into Tony’s cell and to see how he was. 

Tony sat on the floor in the center of his cell, his hands tied behind his back around a pole buried deep in the ground. He glanced up when she walked into the cell, but rather than returning Stephanie’s smile or expressing any excitement to see her, he looked stricken by the sight of her, and immediately turned away. 

“Tony?” Stephanie whispered, confused. “Tony, are—did they hurt you? Did they touch you?”

“I’m fine,” Tony muttered under his breath, though he still refused to look at her. 

Stephanie frowned, but she was too thrown by Tony’s behavior to know who to respond. Tony had never treated her with such disdain. She kneeled beside him on the dirt floor of the cell, hoping that would at least make Tony look at her. 

He refused. 

“Listen,” Stephanie whispered then, doing her best to smile for him so her news would sound like a victory. It _was_ a victory, after all: at the end of all this, Tony and Clint would both walk away as free men. “I spoke with Talia. She accepted my terms: I am her betrothed, and in return for bearing her a child, a daughter, she will forgive Clint and release you both as free men. Her tribe will never again bother you, Tony. You’re safe.”

“Sure,” he said quietly. “Safe from _Women_.”

“She will keep her word, I promise.”

Tony grimaced with disgust at Stephanie’s words, and finally, he looked her in the eyes. “And why would she do that? Because Women are so much better than men? Because Women are a gift, and men could never be?” he spat. “I heard you,” he added with a snarl, and Stephanie fell back in a terrible shock. “I heard you, last night with Clint. I knew I should’ve known better than to trust you, to think you were different. To think I cared for you, that I could—that I could even love you. I’ll spare you the trouble of asking me to make you with child; my answer is no. Death or freedom, Stephanie, but I want nothing more to do with you.”

With every malicious word, Stephanie curled further and further into herself, until it was all she could do to run from his cell, with her head in her hands. She found the dragon, and even though it was still the dead of night, she crawled under the wing of her loyal companion. 

There, in the only privacy she could find, she wept, and wept, and wept. 

*** 

Two days later, Tony and Clint were released back in Tony’s swamp in advance of Stephanie’s ceremony with Chief Talia. 

As soon as the warriors were out of sight, Clint turned to Tony with a frown. “So, what was it about my plan you didn’t like? I thought it was pretty good, myself.”

Tony glared at the other man and shoved himself up to his feet. He had better things to do than listening to a back-stabbing friend. 

“What?” Clint complained from where he still sat in the moist grass, then in a louder voice he called after Tony again. “Wait, what’d I say!“

“I helped you find the Last Chief!” Tony shouted back. “I helped bring her back! I did everything I promised, and now it’s your damn turn, _pal:_ get out of my fucking swamp!”

Calmly, Clint got up to his feet and brushed himself off. The tunic and trousers he’d been provided with were now the only changes of clothes he had, and he intended to take good care of them. 

“What are you talking about?” Clint called back, and in clear contrast to Tony’s heartache and shame, Clint was genuinely confused. “Stephanie isn’t the Last Chief.”

“Of course she is! The curse is being broken today,” Tony glowered, gesturing in the general direction of the main homestead of Chief Talia’s tribe. “She’s binding herself to a Chief of her kin. She’ll give her a child.”

“….well, yeah. She’s cursed, but she’s a different cursed person, man,” Clint eventually said. “I—you mean, she didn’t tell you?”

“She didn’t have to. I heard enough from her conversation with you the other night,” Tony growled with a new gust of rage. “How Women are so much better than men; what good would a man be, when one could choose a Woman?”

“So, in almost every other way, you’re pretty clever,” Clint said after a beat, “but in this you are so wrong that I would laugh if I didn’t think you threw it in her face. Did you even listen her?”

Tony frowned at the suggestion that he was wrong, and in a habitual defensive gesture, he crossed his arms over his chest. “Listen to her say what?”

“I can’t—it’s not my place to tell you, Tony,” Clint said more quietly. “But, I’ll say that she cares about you. A lot. She’s not binding herself to Chief Talia because she wants to, she’s doing it so we can be free. She’d rather be with you in some smelly, stupid cottage.”

Tony stared at Clint. He couldn’t move. 

“No.”

“Yes,” Clint said with a shrug of his shoulders. 

“No,” Tony insisted. It couldn’t be true. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Clint said again, and whatever Tony was going to say was lost in a powerful gust of wind that blew down from directly overhead. Both men looked up into the sky to find Stephanie’s black dragon descending into the swamp beside them. With her head lowered and eyes downcast, she lumbered to them until she was close enough to lie down with a huff and nose at Clint’s hip for attention. 

Tony and Clint both stared at her, unsure of why she was there, and how they should feel about it. 

Much too quickly, Tony lit up with a big smile. “Yes!” He cheered, gesturing at the despondent dragon. “Fire-power! We can save Stephanie from Chief Talia!”

“Aw, come on,” Clint sighed, rubbing the dragon’s nose gently in an effort to soothe her. How something so scaly and so frightening looked heartbroken and miserable was beyond him, but somehow it explained Stephanie’s hesitation to bring the dragon into a fight. “Can’t you see she’s sad? She’s sad, Tony.”

“So am I,” Tony countered. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t at least try to—for Stephanie, I mean; she shouldn’t have to be bound to someone she doesn’t care for for life because of us. It can’t be too late for that, right?” he trailed off uncomfortably, and the uncertainty of what to believe, or what to do was enough to make him want to scream. Scream at himself, scream at the scary dragon that was napping, scream at Clint for letting it go this far without telling him what was happening. 

“No, even Stephanie wouldn’t say yes, Tony,” Clint said quietly, and inwardly even Tony agreed with that. “She’s not just a big, scary weapon. She was Stephanie’s friend.” 

The big black dragon closed her big, red eyes, and with a long, final sigh, a bright purple light glowed bright from within the breast of the dragon until it gradually turned into a bright, blinding white light that enveloped it’s massive body entirely. 

When the light finally faded and Tony and Clint could see again, there lay a naked, red-headed Woman in the mud and grass of Tony’s swamp where the dragon had once lain. 

“I’m really tired of magic,” Clint muttered while Tony hurried to pull his tunic over his head and offer it to the young Woman. Clint rushed to the cottage, while Tony helped her as she struggled to push herself up to sitting. Careful of where exactly he put his hands, he held the tunic in front of her to cover her until she could better control her jerking limbs and trembling nerves. 

“What—who? What was that?” he whispered almost rhetorically—after all, just because he had seen it with his own two eyes didn’t mean he necessarily believed what had happened. 

“He—he broke,” she stuttered hoarsely, her voice breaking and croaking around the syllables as if she hadn’t used her voice in many, many years. “He broke the curse. Clint did. I’m—I’m the one you’re looking for,” she said, repeating Stephanie’s words from earlier. “I am the Last Chief.”

*** 

“So, we don’t have a dragon, but we have the Last Chief,” Tony summarized when they were all sitting in his cottage. The Last Chief went by the name Natasha, and even with Tony’s only two spare layers of clothes and bundled up in his bedquilt, she shuddered violently from the cold. Turns out, spending centuries as a cold-blooded reptile really messed with your mammalian temperature regulation. Tony brought her a cup of hot water, and Natasha closed her hands around the warm ceramic immediately, eager to absorb its warmth. 

“But I didn’t do anything Stephanie hadn’t already done,” Clint observed quietly, “how did I break the curse?”

“Stephanie is cursed herself,” Natasha whispered, fighting to speak without letting her teeth chattering from the cold. “You—you cannot break a curse if you are cursed.”

“But you’re the Great Chief now, the Last Chief” Tony said slowly, almost afraid to ask his question. “Yours is the most powerful magic in the world.”

“In—in the known world,” Natasha corrected quietly, as if Tony had time to nit-pick. 

“Right, whatever,” Tony urged her on, “but—so, can you break Stephanie’s curse?”

“Can break spell, not curse. Can ward against everything,” Natasha said, and with another sip of hot water, she finally started to sound more like a person. “Stephanie, she was cursed because she wanted to help me. When she found me, she stayed with me. She was my first friend in, in centuries.”

“So, what you’re saying is, if we want to interrupt her binding ceremony,” Tony said as patiently as he could manage, “you can stop the Chief from turning us into asses?”

“Bold of you to think you aren’t already asses,” Natasha drawled, but then with a little smirk, she said, “but Talia won’t harm you. Besides, I can do one better.”

Clint perked up, and briefly paused in rubbing her arms through the quilt to ask, “Yeah? What’s that?”

*** 

“Kneel, my honorable Chief, and Stephanie,” an Elder instructed in a gentle voice, and before the entire tribe, Chief Talia and Stephanie kneeled on the grass at the Elder’s feet for the ceremony. She took Stephanie’s right hand and the Chief’s left hand, then laid one over the other. With a long, woven red silk rope, she bound their forearms, wrists, and hands together. “As we reflect on—”

With the loud, startling clap of lightning, Clint, Natasha, and Tony appeared in the empty space behind the Elder. 

“As you are,” Natasha said, and all the warriors rushing to the defense of their Chief froze where they stood. The Elder, who has turned in surprise to see what was happening behind her, was frozen as such, and even the Chief, with her own formidable reserves of magical power, could do nothing but kneel on the green and watch her betrothed climb to her feet. 

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Stephanie cried breathlessly, and Natasha came forward to pull her friend into her arms. “You’re free, you—how?”

“Another time,” Natasha promised, and with a final squeeze of Stephanie’s shoulder, she stepped back and looked at Tony. “Tony? You wanted to tell Stephanie something?”

“I, uh,” Tony stammered. He stared at Stephanie, wide-eyed, as if now that he was finally here, he wasn’t sure what he could possibly say. “I, I was wrong. I thought—I misheard you and Clint. I thought you were binding yourself to the Chief because she is a Woman. Because you thought, you know. That she is better.”

“Oh, gods—if you only knew—”

“Clint—well, he didn’t say, actually, but he said you weren’t talking about me. And, I. I don’t …if you don’t care, then I don’t care, Stephanie,” he finally said, more carefully. “I trust you, and, I care about you; I care about you very much, in fact. If, you would still have me, that is.” 

“If?” Stephanie echoed with a watery laugh, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “There is no if, Tony. _Yes_ , yes!” 

Stephanie had barely finished saying yes when Tony ran to her and pulled her into his arms, and as relief and happiness and profound affection overwhelmed him all at once, he lifted her into the air and spun with her in his arms, kissing her all over her face and her lips between private, whispered promises to love her and care for her. 

“I will be faithful to you and only you, for as long as you will have me,” he promised her as he held her securely against his body with one arm, and cupped her face with his free hand. “These eyes and this heart will be all I will ever worship.”

“And I will be faithful to you and only you, for as long as you will have me,“ Stephanie promised in return, and then carefully, if cautiously, she pressed her lips against Tony’s in a slow, tender kiss. 

For one last time, a golden light shone from deep within Stephanie’s chest like a bright, white star, cascading over her skin and her clothes until it consumed her body entirely, even as Tony held her tightly to his heart. It all happened so fast that Tony was still lost in kissing Stephanie that he barely noticed her transforming, until she grew nearly a hundred pounds heavier in his arms. He pulled his head away from the kiss as he stumbled backward, struggling to stay upright with all 240 pounds of Steve clutched possessively in his arms. 

“I—holy _shi_ —what’s _happening?_ ” he grunted under his breath, staring up into Steve’s eyes. He knew those eyes, and all at once it occurred to him that it didn’t matter any more if it was a man or a Woman in his arms; whoever this was, Tony would not be letting go if it killed him. “Stephanie?”

“Steve, actually,” Steve replied softly, and while Tony struggled to keep from toppling over or dropping Steve unceremoniously to his feet, Steve indulged in the easy target Tony’s lips became now when they were finally so close. He kissed Tony, over and over again, sometimes playfully, sometimes tenderly, but always with an adoring smile on his lips. “And, if you wouldn’t mind taking me home to that cottage of yours,” he whispered against Tony’s eager, kiss-swollen lips, “I’ve been wearing this bitch of a dress for seventy years, and I’d love to get out of it as soon as possible.”


End file.
